Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Going Up Rocket, Coming Down Stick

One thing about pursuing family history research via
historic newspapers: you can gain a sense of the changes in expression over a
span of one hundred years or so. Looking at all the newspaper entries while
researching the surnames associated with the Samuel Bean family of Redwood City, California,
I certainly noticed that. Language changes.

You might think English is English is English, but it simply
is not so.

In one of the many false starts I encountered along the way—the
multiple entries for a Harry Watrous not our own—I ran across one particular
expression that I thought fitting for what I was experiencing right at that
moment.

I have no idea what the expression might have meant to
residents of northern California
in 1883, but I’ll let you have a look at it and see if you take away the same
message I do.

From the front page of the Sacramento Daily Union on November 21, a Lucy Harper—supposedly writing from the very art capital
of the time, Paris—analyzed her new-found artistic sensation, the Harry Watrous
that turned out not to be part of my
Bean family’s line.

An excerpt from her observations:

I am always glad to
signalize the advent of any new American star on the horizon of art, and it is
my pleasing task to-day to tell of some very admirable work just executed by a
young American painter, Harry Watrous…. He is still very young, and has not
been studying long, but he is not only exceptionally talented, but he is an
earnest, conscientious worker, and his progress within the last year or two has
been something to marvel at. His success has not been the case of “going up
rocket,” with the chance of “coming down stick,” but it has been achieved by
steady, patient study and persevering work, joined to great natural gifts.

Despite my disappointment that this Harry Watrous wasn’t my
Harry Watrous—well, Blanche Bean’s Harry, to be precise—I couldn’t help but
notice the aptness of the expression for exactly what was happening to me in
this research quest.

Sometimes, the hits keep coming at us, fast and furious, and
we think we are rolling in the data riches of a research jackpot—only to discover
that what we first thought wasn’t exactly how things turned out in the end.

It’s not just that “what goes up must come down.” It’s a
matter of recognizing that, even when something seems like it will be not only
a sure thing but the next best thing ever, it might not end up that way.

Sometimes, no matter how wonderful the exponential increase
of all these online resources might be, there still is the need for archives
that hold records that we may touch.
We still must have those repositories where the original documents can be
preserved and referred back to, if need be. Sometimes, slow and steady wins the
research race.

That’s the kind of reminder that makes me glad I’ve got a
research trip to the Bay Area lined up for the near future. Yeah, it means I’ll
have to get in my car, time things just right to miss the rush hour traffic,
and somehow jive with the individual schedules of all the libraries and
cemeteries I’ll need to visit. But at least that’s the kind of Plan B I can
keep in my back pocket for when such things happen.

Sometimes, those new options do “go up rocket” yet “come down stick.”

Photograph above: Unidentified woman in hat, possibly from 1890s, from the collection of Bill Bean. As I received it, the photograph was hand trimmed--a hallmark of Bill's sister, Leona Bean Grant--from card stock, apparently removed from a gray backing, of which traces still adhered to the glue. There was no label on the back.

You would stick the stick into the ground and light the rocket's fuse. Both would fly off and the rocket would explode up in the air. The stick would then fall back to earth, a useless, clattering remnant of the excitement, danger and beauty of the fireworks display.

I think that was the analogy that the authoress what trying to convey in her gush about the artist.

This is such an apt expression: "going up rocket," which typically implies "coming down stick." it's self-explanatory and captures the trajectory (pun intended) of human hopes. It makes me think of "flash in the pan" or "overnight sensation." Too bad people don't use this expression any more. I think I'll start using it now.

Mariann, in that romance with those words which "have a way about them," I did fall in love with this phrase, too. It's gained for itself a prominent place in my lexicon. Nothing like giving old words new life!

About Me

It is my contention that, after a lifetime, one of the greatest needs people have is to be remembered. They want to know: have I made a difference?
I write because I can't keep for myself the gifts others have entrusted to me. Through what I've already been given--though not forgetting those to whom I must pass this along--from family I receive my heritage; through family I leave a legacy. With family I weave a tapestry. These are my strands.